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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe 'Religious Liberty' Campaign May Be Backfiring For Conservatives
ED KILGORE FEBRUARY 25, 2014, 6:00 AM EST
In 2012, the conservative campaign for religious liberty looked like a smart and possibly winning strategic gambit. Aimed specifically at the Affordable Care Acts contraception coverage mandate, nestled in a broader claim of institutional and individual exemptions from complex and sometimes unpopular laws and regulations, the campaign linked the Conference of U.S. Catholic Bishops with conservative evangelicals and both to the Republican politicians (including presidential candidate Mitt Romney) who made it a new front in both their anti-Obamacare and family values messaging.
Some leading Catholic Democrats (e.g., E.J. Dionne) feared it would become a crucial wedge issue. And it gave a nice First Amendment gloss to unseemly culturally reactionary impulses, while providing mainstream respectability to the constitutional conservative claim that church-state separation was a threat to faith itself.
Two years later, the religious liberty crusade shows signs of backfiring. This very day, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer may veto a bill just passed by a legislature controlled by her own party that provides a broad exemption from discrimination laws to businesses and individuals claiming compliance violates their beliefs. And more generally, an argument that once distracted from the extremist nature of conservative Christian objections to gay rights and reproductive rights is drawing attention to them in a dangerous way.
This began happening first on the contraception coverage front, where the religious objection to the Obamacare mandate had to be justified (in the Hobby Lobby litigation most notably) by the claim that highly effective contraceptive devices (the IUD) and treatments (Plan B and hormonal patches) used by millions of women were in fact abortifacients.
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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/the-religious-liberty-campaign-may-be-backfiring-for-conservatives
Populist_Prole
(5,364 posts)"Christian Inc" may seem like some strong bulwark to them, but it's as fractured and balkanized as any other bloc; common conservative leaning nothwithstanding.
Around my neck of the woods, protestants despise catholics as much as pagans.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)How on earth could a gay couple coming into your bakery to buy bread or your restaurant to buy a meal do anything to your faith or practice of your religion? This is in fact saying that discrimination can be based on treating people as non-humans. Just by the fact that they are gay or seem gay, you can shun them and throw them out of your business????? Their very person is an offense to you? It's making my brain destruct!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know I'm not saying anything anyone here doesn't already know. I think the backlash against these kinds of things is going to put the fundies back under their rock where they belong. When I was growing up, fundies were shunned for being insane freaks. Reagan gave them their fifteen minutes and they used their allotted time to screech and howl their incoherent ramblings. Now it's time to yank them off the stage. And it won't be soon enough!!!!!
Bandit
(21,475 posts)If you are for abortion or contraception you could be discriminated against just as much as if you were gay. I would bet a mixed race marriage would offend their religion just as much.
Skittles
(153,298 posts)Last edited Tue Feb 25, 2014, 09:31 PM - Edit history (1)
they are defending their right to be racists and bigots
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)They're trying to bully their bigotry into law. I'm so sick of these people.
Skittles
(153,298 posts)NEWSFLASH - it is not favored by anyone who isn't a sanctimonious, teabagging piece of SHIT......this bill is not just anti-gay, it is ANTI-AMERICAN
wocaonimabi
(187 posts)They are still pissed off about it.
Read their websites if you want to understand them. They admit to it themselves in any discussion about anyone other than white christians exercising their Constitutional rights and guarantees.
They are a sick and dangerous lot.
SharonAnn
(13,781 posts)theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)All you have to do is visit the website for the USCCB and you can track how this "religious liberty" movement evolved. And as it grew it came to encompass not only anti-choice lobbying, but opposition to ENDA, contraception and the HHS mandate, gay marriage, et al. In the process they hooked up with RW evangelicals and became what they probably thought was an formidable political force. After all, such a coalition worked in places like Uganda, Nigeria and Cameroon. I can only hope that in their zeal they overreached and the backlash will be fierce.
quaker bill
(8,225 posts)Our conscientious objection to war is already recognized in law. However we cannot refuse to pay war taxes, short of a vow of poverty, which some few have taken.
I think that if they get the religious freedom to discriminate, we should get the freedom to pass on war taxes. This could be just the shot in the arm Quakerism needs.
Personally I hope they get struck down, even if it means I have to continue to pay war taxes.